All Proton services will have a free tier, with consumers and businesses paying for more advanced features and more storage

Protonmail is uniting its email service, VPN, calendar and online cloud storage into one package to create what it says is the ‘world’s first privacy-by-default ecosystem’.

The company, which is renaming itself Proton, has released new version of its web, mobile, and desktop applications that are now accessible through a new landing page. All the apps have also had new logos.

All Proton services will have a free tier, with consumers and businesses paying for more advanced features and more storage.

Proton is pitching this new upgrade as a compelling challenger to Google’s Drive, Gmail, and other workplace apps – having put out research that suggests customers are concerned about practises like email scanning, contact scanning, and location tracking.

Google stopped scanning email content in 2017, but it still scans emails to facilitate features like adding bookings and deliveries from emails directly into its calendar app.

Currently, Proton has its Mail app and VPN available on iPhones, with a Calendar app and the Drive app available on Android. While the iOS versions of the apps will not be available at launch, Proton says they will be coming in a few months.

For many years, the internet has been dominated by ad-based business models which abuse privacy and leverage our most intimate data for financial gain, said Andy Yen, founder and CEO of Proton, in a statement.

He said: Proton’s mission is to provide an alternative and help build a just internet economy that works for users and all of society. The transformation from individual privacy services towards an integrated privacy ecosystem is an essential step toward building a complete replacement to Big Tech’s offerings.